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Friday, February 22, 2013

The Fizzkit 1, 2, 3

Boattalk. I love boat talk. This time I met with Ana, and we took the FizzKit for a spin. Don't know what it is? It's what makes the Flying Fizz so friggin fantastic. The boats in this post is the raw, test boat that's inside the kit.

Beating

It's meant to have a boat built around it. If you wanna see something more recent and boatlike, - check Orca's blog for posts about Manul's beautiful Waddensea cruiser. Manul also built a trimaran with the FizzKit, and it sails great. I couldn't find anything about the FizzKit on Jane's blog, but this will give you a glimpse of the evolution that lead to the FizzKit. The Fizzkit holds the essence of all the knowledge gained from the Fizz 1, 2, and 3.

around

So this actually works? Oh yes it does. The Fizzkit comes with all the features that a sailor would expect such as windvane, compas and telltails. Three (or more) sails. Support for four people on board, and they can all balance and trim the boat. If they don't, it will (optionally) capsize. It can be tweaked to act like a keeler, a dinghy, a planing dinghy, a foiler (see the Moth posts) or even a multihull. Ofcourse you can sit in the cockpit, but there's also a trapez.

the

It has full support for all the WWC wonders. There's windshifts plus (optionally many) local variations. There's a wave simulator with a direction, speed, length and height. There's current with speed and direction. Both waves and currents come with (optionally many) local variations. Currents and waves are also adjusted according to depth. Shallow waters means less current. For all three, wind, waves and current, there is a option to set variance, so even if the waves are set to 1 meters high, and 5 meters long, they'll never be the same.

island.

There is built in shadowing; Tweakable ofcourse. Classboats can have realistic races, but the tweakable shadow allows for true multiclass races. The sailshape can be adjusted from open over several states to rounded. The sail is visibly changed to reflect the trim. The steering is precise and you can choose to use wheel or tiller. The dynamics are great. Heeling works fast, and the boat will lift its snout when planing. There's live sheets and trimlines everywhere. There's audiofeedback as well. Several different sounds depending on speed and sailing state.

Boattalk with Wanda, Ana and Brutus

On the inside it's completely modularized; The entire WWC, wind, water and current simulations are located in separate modules, so they don't mix with the sailing engine. The sailing engine is held completely separate from that. It just reads the WWC to "get" the attributes of the physical environment. The core sailing engine is closed source; However, all the settings can be tweaked via notecards, so there's really no need to fiddle with the highly optimized sailengine code. The kit is by far the most advanced sailing engine available in SL, and the code isn't just an afternoon read.

The FizzKit was built by sailors to get an absolutely first class and realistic sailing experience. Get it at Tradewinds Yacht Club. The fully sailable testboat is in the box along with extensive documentation, help, sounds, animations, wwc interface, several test tools and more.